Tuesday, March 27, on Gadfly Radio, ‎Martha Montelongo and John Seiler are at a conference withformer CalWatchdog editor Steve Greenhut, so I will be hosting Gadfly Radio all by myself tomorrow on CRNtalk.com, CRN1. Tune in LIVE at 10:00 a.m. PDT.

I’ll be talking with CalWatchdog.com’s John Hrabe about the Cal State University administrative pay outrage. Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Avik Roy will join me in the second half hour to analyze the latest from the fight over Obamacare this week at the United States Supreme Court. Don’t miss it!

A Commentary by FRANK KEEGAN | March 22, 2012
in State Budget Solutions–Real Solutions for Real Budget Problems

“Anybody who ever questioned how many layers of corruption are woven into state and municipal pension systems, should take a look at the latest Government Accountability Office report on “Challenges of Hedge Fund and Private Equity Investing.”

Excerpt: “But why the Pledge of Allegiance? Is this some sort of pox that Americans have caught? Is it that as their country goes downhill, they believe that this is some sort of ritual incantation that will resurrect its past life? Or, more likely, is this a way of “unifying” the people in the room, of sweeping them under one social umbrella so that they’ll be more receptive to the union messages? A blessing would do that. Is there something wrong with saying a blessing? Is blessing the United States of America supposed to be better? No, but it’s more politically effective.”Click here to read full post, Pledge of Allegiance at a Union Dinner « LewRockwell.com Blog

“Paul is the strongest candidate with independents, tying Obama with them while the rest of the GOP field trails by 6-15 points.”

“…The new poll reveals that Paul is narrowing the gap between himself and Obama by 5 percentage points since last month’s PPP poll…”

“…Other notables are that among one of the fastest growing voter segments, the Hispanic vote, Paul takes a full third of the Hispanic vote against the sitting President, with no other candidate able to come within 5 points of Paul’s Hispanic support…”

California’s high-speed rail is a massive spending boondoggle from the 2008 ballot. Its cost nearly doubled to about $100 billion while not a single mile of track has yet been laid?

Well, if you liked high-speed rail, you’ll love Proposition 29, coming to the California ballot this June.
High speed rail, said Richard Rider, Chairman of the San Diego Tax Fighters, at a recent appearance on San Diego’s NBC affiliate, “promised in writing that it was going to operate under certain restrictions and now does not.”

That’s because special interests, with no accountability to voters or to taxpayers, hijacked the process doling out favors to political cronies and driving up the cost. It’s a reminder, Rider explained that “the idea that we should be budgeting money at the ballot box has not worked well for us.”

Like high-speed rail, Prop 29 creates an unaccountable commission packed with political appointees. The decisions this commission makes over the nearly $1 billion in annual new taxes it will administer are untouchable for 15 years, not even in cases of waste, fraud or abuse. That means that even though California schools are laying off teachers, this special interest spending commission can dole out favors as it pleases, with no strict controls over spending. The fact is Prop 29 does nothing to fix California’s $10+ billion budget deficit but does everything to make sure that the reckless spending that got California into the fiscal mess it’s in will continue unabated.

Californians have a choice this June. Hopefully they’ll come to realize that decades of unsustainable spending on questionable projects put California in the sorry state it is today. Prop 29 is just more of the same for California—something the state just can’t afford.

California’s high-speed rail is a massive spending boondoggle from the 2008 ballot. Its cost nearly doubled to about $100 billion while not a single mile of track has yet been laid? Well, if you liked high-speed rail, you’ll love Proposition 29, coming to the California ballot this June. High speed rail, said Richard Rider, Chairman of the San Diego Tax Fighters, at a recent appearance on San Diego’s NBC affiliate, “promised in writing that it was going to operate under certain restrictions and now does not.” That’s because special interests, with no accountability to voters or to taxpayers, hijacked the process doling out favors to political cronies and driving up the cost. It’s a reminder, Rider explained that “the idea that we should be budgeting money at the ballot box has not worked well for us.” Like high-speed rail, Prop 29 creates an unaccountable commission packed with political appointees. The decisions this commission makes over the nearly $1 billion in annual new taxes it will administer are untouchable for 15 years, not even in cases of waste, fraud or abuse. That means that even though California schools are laying off teachers, this special interest spending commission can dole out favors as it pleases, with no strict controls over spending. The fact is Prop 29 does nothing to fix California’s $10+ billion budget deficit but does everything to make sure that the reckless spending that got California into the fiscal mess it’s in will continue unabated. Californians have a choice this June. Hopefully they’ll come to realize that decades of unsustainable spending on questionable projects put California in the sorry state it is today. Prop 29 is just more of the same for California—something the state just can’t afford.

A test for state’s untouchable pensionsStockton, on verge of bankruptcy, running up against the 800-pound gorilla known as CalPERSBy MARY WILLIAMS WALSHNEW YORK TIMESPublished: Sunday, March 18, 2012 at 4:03 a.m.Last Modified: Sunday, March 18, 2012 at 4:03 a.m.

When the city manager of troubled Stockton had to tell City Council members why it was on track to become the biggest U.S. city yet to go bankrupt, it took hours to get through the list.

There was the free health care for retirees, the unpaid parking tickets, the revenue bonds without enough revenue to pay them. On it went, a grim drumbeat of practically every fiscal malady imaginable, except an obvious one: municipal pensions.

Some public pension experts think they know why pensions were not on the city manager’s list. They see the hidden hand of California’s giant state pension system, known as Cal-PERS, which administers hundreds of billions of dollars in retirement obligations for municipalities across the state.

CalPERS does not want cities like Stockton going back on their promises, and it argues that the state Constitution bars any reduction in pensions — and not just for people who have already retired. State law also forbids cuts in the pensions that today’s public workers expect to earn in the future, CalPERS says, even in cases of severe fiscal distress. Workers at companies have no comparable protection. (Click here to read the article)

According to Stanford and California Common Sense studies, over the past 12 years state spending on higher education has increased just 30 percent. Spending on the retirement benefits for government employees has grown more than 10 times as fast, tripling, and spending on prisons has more than doubled. The message is clear: Despite revenue growth, cash has not gone to fund higher education. So on this the students are right.

I love that Pat Robertson has broken with the Politically Correct and spoke out against the war on drugs. Here’s Dr. Oz, who another nationally famous, influential and highly respected Pastor has worked with, Dr Oz, on Medical Marijuana and common sense policy. I hope Rich Warren follows Pat Robertson’s example and speaks with moral authority for the truth, marijuana and the absurdity of our current policy!

James Gierach of LEAP (law enforcement against prohibition) talks about the failed “War on Drugs Policy” endorses 420 University. Former State Prosecutor and current LEAP board member, Jim Gierach speaks for LEAP on 420 University about how the War on Drugs is both at the heart of a wide range of social problems, with special emphasis on how it fails our children.

SACRAMENTOMarch 14, 2012 1:37pm • State among the worst for spending transparency

• ‘It’s disappointing and embarrassing’

Want to know how your state servants are spending your taxes? Good luck, if you want to know about California’s state government.

A new report says California ranks among the lowest when it comes to being transparent in spending.

“Transparency in government spending promotes fiscal responsibility, checks corruption, and bolsters public confidence,” says the report from the California Public Interest Research Group’s Education Fund.

America’s Atlas Generation – The Forgotten 33%
By Editor, on January 9th, 2012

Pull Quote: America’s forgotten 33%, those who are neither entitled to avoid all taxes, nor members of the political class who pay no taxes, nor the super-rich, might be called “The Atlas Generation.” They carry the world on their shoulders. Their challenge is daunting – they must convince the political class to support sustainable taxpayer funded benefits under formulas that apply equally to ALL workers, public or private, without relying on Wall Street speculative investments to pay for this. Equally challenging, they must convince the entitled class that there is an alternative to identity politics, the politics of envy, and the cycle of government dependency. And they must convince a critical mass of the politically influential super-rich to embrace and advocate a political economy that nurtures competition instead of crony capitalism.

State & Local – POLITICS
Cash-strapped California city gears up for battle with unions over pension reform
By William Lajeunesse
Published March 14, 2012

Facing an ocean of debt, San Diego is offering voters in June a potential lifeboat: public employee pension reform.

“Taxpayers have had it,” former Mayor Roger Hedgecock said. “A huge portion of the city budget is going to fund these pensions far beyond anything in private sector.”

The initiative would force new city workers into private-sector style 401(k)s. Current employees would pay more, and their retirement payments would be based solely on base salary – not accrued sick leave and vacation time, often used to inflate pension pay.

CalPERS reduces investment forecast – How will California cover the difference?
March 14, 2012
n the midst of massive budget deficits and recent heat over pension reform, the Board of Directors of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, known as CalPERS, voted today to lower its assumed rate of return for the first time since the recession dragged down stock and real-estate prices.

They’re readjusting from 7.75 to 7.5 percent, which might not sound like a lot, but in actual dollars, it means finding an additional $167 million in the state budget to pay pensions, for which California spent $3.5 billion in 2011. The new rate will take effect on July 1, although CalPERS has been asked to phase the change in over two years, hopefully sparing cities from more cuts.
To read more and to listen to the audio with Pat Morrison, Click here.

The Union War on School Volunteers
By Editor, on March 13th, 2012

There are so many facets to the problem of public sector unions that one of their most outrageous abuses, their war on volunteerism, is barely covered by the media. But it happens all the time, especially in public education. If any volunteer does work that could be done by a unionized worker, even if no funds exist to hire that worker, the union is likely to use all their power to stop that volunteer from providing their services.

In Culver City, a suburb of Los Angeles, the union war on school volunteers has taken a new twist. In order to maintain supplemental language programs, as well as adequate staffing of classroom helpers in the Culver City Unified School District, a few philanthropic individuals have funded the payment of modest stipends to people to assist the teachers. They are essentially volunteers. But that’s not ok with the Culver City Association of Classified Employees – translation, the local union – who has threatened to file a complaint with the powerful, union-friendly Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), a “quasi-judicial administrative agency that is charged with upholding and administering collective bargaining statutes that cover employees working in California schools.” For more on this, refer to the following reports: “Parents lodge strong opposition to unionizing of CCUSD language school employees,” and “Parents Attracting Name Allies in Dispute with Union.”

Long a harbinger of national trends and an incubator of innovation, cash-strapped California eagerly awaits a temporary revenue surge from Facebook IPO stock options and capital gains. Meanwhile, Stockton may soon become the state’s largest city to go bust. Call it the agony and ecstasy of contemporary California. (Click here to read more.)

Jacob Sullum | March 14, 2012A new Stratfor primer on the illicit methamphetamine market cites some numbers that illustrate the risk premium associated with prohibition, which delivers big profits to murderous thugs all over the world:

Depending on the price of chemicals used—determined by the quantity of chemicals purchased and the legitimacy of the supplier—the cost of manufacturing 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of meth comes to anywhere between $150 and $4,000….According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Illicit Drug Prices Mid-Year 2009 report, the wholesale market price for meth is $19,720 per kilogram while its street value is $87,717 per kilogram. Needless to say, this is a huge markup.

Doherty coments on the different facets of this race, especially for the delegates, bound and unbound. The factions, groups and organizations that comprise the Ron Paul Revolution, is broad. Doherty provides keen analysis of the Tea Party, the grassroots, the campaign groups and begs the contemplation of the potentiality of this movement.

I loved this interview and am listened to it again, and I will do so again, after that:

Ron Paul Revolution: What Now? The Paul campaign definitely isn’t winning first ballot. But there’s still much to win. Brian Doherty | March 9, 2012

After Super Tuesday, it’s officially official: Ron Paul won’t go into Tampa with enough delegates to win the presidential nomination. Still, because of the unbound nature of 197 extant delegates from caucus states, and his campaign’s diligent efforts to ensure that their people rise through the convoluted GOP state convention process, it’s likely that he has many more committed delegates in hand than the media counts. And as still-excited Paul partisans will tell you: Paul can’t go into Tampa with enough to win on first ballot. As The Daily Beast points out, it seems unlikely that Mitt Romney, clearly in the lead now, can do so either. (Click here to read the full article.)

I thank everyone in my life because it can be harsh and challenging, and love, friendship, and integrity are edifying pillars.

I am very excited about GadflyRadio.com That’s been my big project and focus in February. It’s like what happens when your office or home gets flooded and then all of a sudden you have to deal with the damage and keep going.

We have a nice home for the production of our show, in a nice studio with good audio, and we have a great website for GadflyRadio podcasts and posts about the upcoming guests, shows, and topics.

There’s a lot going on and I hope to contribute to the conversations, in a way that advances the truth, liberty and stands in integrity.

With the backing of Gates and Google, Khan Academy and its free online educational videos are moving into the classroom and across the world. Their goal: to revolutionize how we teach and learn. Sanjay Gupta reports.

“The future of higher education is online. This is an opportunity for the best professors to reach a global audience. Meanwhile, prices will collapse.”__David E. Shellenberger

#1 Sebastian Thrun, a former Stanford computer science professor, gave a talk on his experiment in teaching a course on artificial intelligence. In parallel with his usual lecture format, he offered the same course online in a sort of interactive tutorial format that made use of the latest research about how we learn most effectively — basically in small batches followed by quizzes and exercises at certain intervals that, once mastered, mean the student is ready to move on. By the end of the course, most of his students were not longer coming he the lecture and he had 160,000 people around the world taking the course online. You read that right.

Stockton, Calif., a hard-pressed industrial city of nearly 300,000 people in the agriculturally lush Central Valley 80 miles east of San Francisco, is grabbing national headlines because it might become the largest U.S. city yet to enter Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

First, it must go through a 90-day mediation process mandated by a new California law designed to put the brakes on an expected wave of municipal bankruptcies. But the city is out of cash, and other cities aren’t far behind.

Stockton’s situation epitomizes the reality of local government in California today: City governments don’t exist to provide services to the public, but function mainly to dispense high salaries and pensions to the people who work for the government.

Ninety-four of Stockton’s retirees, for instance, receive six-figure pensions, placing them among a rapidly growing list of 15,000 California public retirees in the $100,000 pension club. Click here to read more.

Anyone who’s been following the news in recent weeks knows that the tax-and-spend lobby is planning to unleash of horde of new tax hikes at the ballot box this election year. Three major hikes, which altogether would raise taxes by tens of billions of dollars annually, are all currently jockeying for a spot on the November 2012 ballot. However, flying under the radar is an equally abhorrent tax increase that creates a nearly $1 billion per year spending program dominated by special interests with no accountability to the public.

Proposition 29, the so-called California Cancer Research Act, raises taxes to create a massive new spending program run by a new commission with six political appointees. The decisions of this commission, which has the authority to spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year, are unchangeable by even the Governor and the State Legislature for 15 years, even in cases of fraud or waste. Worse yet, the commission can spend the taxes from Californians outside California!

Leading fiscal conservative and anti-tax groups are weighing in strongly against the measure. As David Spady of Americans for Prosperity wrote here on Flash Report, “The last thing California should be doing is creating a brand-new billion-dollar special-interest spending program at a time when we can’t even fund critical state programs like education and public safety. After all, isn’t that a big part of what got us into this budget mess in the first place?”

This election season, voters have a chance to tell the spending lobby that they’re sick and tired of higher taxes and rampant special interest spending. Saying no to Proposition 29 in June should be a prelude to rejecting the tax hikes coming in November.

A nonpartisan group aims to elect “courageous” legislators in the Golden State.

Judith Miller

The importance of the first item – underreporting the size of debt – was illustrated when Lehman Brothers and AIG used aggressive but legal accounting techniques to underreport debt, thereby encouraging uninformed investors to enter into a web of transactions with them that later threatened the world financial system. A similar occasion took place in 1999, when California’s pension funds used aggressive but legal accounting techniques to underreport pension debt in order to show they were overfunded and thereby coax a huge and unfunded pension benefit increase from an uninformed state Legislature. But as Munnell illustrated in a 2010 report, California’s pension funds were actually underfunded in 1999. The cost of that unfunded pension increase has since diverted billions from education and social services, and bigger diversions are on the way.

Viewpoints: State finance officials should face the truth on pension promises
• The state’s pension debt is greater than the state reports.• The state is counting on unlikely investment returns to meet that debt.• Because those returns are unlikely, state pension costs are likely to soar. Read more here

Chapter 4: Bond Holders Seek Governmental Transparency
Taxpayers may be on the hook nationwide for more than $2.5 trillion in pensions, according to David Crane, an economic advisor to former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, with perhaps $500 billion of that in California alone.

“State and local governments utilize a misleading method for reporting the size of public pension obligations,” said Crane, calling it “the Alice in Wonderland world of government pension accounting that allows governments to hide liabilities.”

“California wasn’t alone in this regard,” Crane told the SEC. “Unrealistic reporting of pension promises is a systemic problem. That’s why the SEC must require realistic accounting of public pension promises. For that to happen it must insist upon a realistic discount rate when reporting pension liabilities.”

Roberts is a contributing editor to Calwatchdog and a long-time Bay Area newspaper reporter.
Read more here.

Editorial | San Francisco Chronicle — David Crane is not the most popular man in Sacramento. In fact, his determination to tell legislators what they don’t want to hear – yet need to hear – is about to cost him his position as a University of California regent.” Continue reading . . .

So Crane, a Democrat, and fellow big-time investors Ronald Conway, a Republican, and Gregory Penner, registered Decline-to-State, have set up an organization, Govern for California, to help finance candidates that they think will take the steps needed to confront California’s problems.
Crane insists that the plan is not to elect moderate or centrist candidates but rather “courageous” candidates. Depending how one defines those terms, some may find that is a distinction without a difference.

Crane explains the candidate his group is looking for. “Our number one priority is higher quality people who are intelligent, who are numerate.

“We’ll spend what it takes. These elections don’t cost as much as the power they get. The bang for the buck is really great. It’s like if you find a good company you like, you’ll buy more of the stock.”

Crane says his group’s successful involvement in only a few races will make a great difference in the way California is governed. Click here to read more.

Hasta La Vista, Failure
By Joel Kotkin
Editor of NewGeography.com and Presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University
Friday, December 17th, 2010
Traditionally California Republican governors focus on the hoary economic fundamentals. But Schwarzenegger’s main economic advisor, San Francisco investment banker David Crane, has clung to the notion that California’s creative skills would allow the state to flourish amid “creative destruction.” Click here to read more

Gabe Rose of the Parent Revolution joined us to talk about the unfolding scandal at Desert Trails in Adelanto, CA. Evidence of forgeries and other criminal acts show the union is dead set against parents having any say over their children’s education, if they can’t afford to move and or pay for a private school.

Grimes talked with us about some of her recent posts at CalWatchDog, including:

On Bob’s FB Group page for Choice TV I posted my response to Michelle’s answer to Bob’s question. I hope I can stomach it in the morning when I’m not exhausted and in much discomfort from this flu I’ve suffered since Sunday.

“That was perfect! As a mother of two boys, and a person with the spirit to teach and cause children and people of all ages to learn, in my heart, I loved her answer…”

“Thank you Michelle Rhee. You speak for mothers who care about their children and need to count on the integrity of the school administration and program, that excellent teachers are supported, and ineffective teachers are identified and supported to transform in the areas they are lacking, or supported in choosing a new carreer if it’s not the right path fo them. But her priorities are the correct priorities. The chlidren and their learning and well being is the primary objective and must never be sujugated to the interests of adults over the children. She calls it like it is. They hate her for it. They seeth about her and invect smears and slander, but they also carry out dispicable actions against poor defenseless minority parents, initmidating them, and telling them lies to scare them into recinding their signatures for a Parent Trigger Law drive at Desert Trails, and Compton before that…”

“So many examples across the country… women being locked up, or mothers I should say. Mothers being locked up because they find themselves with the choice between lying to get their child into a performing school, or they have to be doscile obedient ones and allow the system to demand their child goes to one of those miserable failing schools where they are left behind and and future cemented in bleakness or a lot of struggle to survive. I love Michelle Rhee. I’ve yet to hear her udder words that don’t move me in a way that inspires, comforts, and compels me…”

“Stockton … Hercules … Lincoln … Milpitas. The list of cities has grown to four in the span of one week. These are all cities in California recently threatened with budgetary insolvency — where expenses exceed revenues. All have started to explore filing bankruptcy or drastically reducing their budgets and effectively doing the same, as would happen in a bankruptcy court.”

Mr. Marshall’s bill, HB 1160, has passed BOTH houses of the Virginia legislature, including a 39-to-1 vote in the Senate this past Tuesday. This bill prohibits the state of Virginia from assisting the federal government in the unlawful detention of United States citizens. Remember . . .

The Executive Branch gained this power of “kidnapping” as a result of a confusing provision in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). That criminal statue contained tricky language that has fooled many reporters, citizens, and even members of Congress. The measure was deceitfully written to make people think it exempts U.S. citizens when it does NOT! This linguistic deceit was likely intentional. But it’s even more important to defend the principle that citizenship is morally irrelevant, because . . .

The rights that this criminal edict violates are Pre-Constitutional. These rights must be honored for ALL people, NOT just citizens.

A sci-fi-like skin gun that sprays stem cells onto burned skin is the latest treatment in helping burn victims, scientists say. Dr. Jorg Gerlach of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh developed the gun, which sprays a solution of cells and water onto the damaged skin… Click here to read more.

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The status quo of education in the U.S. is destructive to our Nation, and to ignore this truth is to be numb, unconscious or in denial of reality.

"If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament."--A Nation At Risk - April 1983

Drug War Clock for Current Year

Police arrested an estimated 858,408 persons for cannabis violations in 2009. Of those charged with cannabis violations, approximately 89 percent were charged with possession only.
Source: Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation Your tax dollars at work--but for whom?

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Dedicated to considerations of justice and the pursuit of goodness… "to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth." --Plato on Socrates